A “Good Trouble” rally scheduled for Miller Park on Friday night has been relocated after Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke asked the group to move, citing COVID-19 restrictions.
Unity Group Corresponding Secretary Eric Atkins said in a statement that the 6:30 p.m. event has been moved to Community Haven, 815 N. Hickory St.
Under consistent executive orders from the mayor since March, Berke told the organizers of the Atlanta-based Good Trouble Freedom Ride that they could not be permitted to gather in Miller Park for the Chattanooga stop of a three-part southern tour to celebrate the legacy of civil rights giant John Lewis.
“We have had a rule that says we can have not more than 10 people in the executive orders that I’m signing. We reached out to the organizers and let them know that was the case,” Berke said in a virtual news conference on Friday. “We’ve been consistent in saying that we do not want those large events on our property.”
The caravan of activists honoring Lewis and the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act traveled from Atlanta to Louisville – the home of Breonna Taylor, who was killed by police in March – and is scheduled to come through Chattanooga, where activists have been protesting the police killings of Taylor and others all summer, heightened locally by the case of Reginald Arrington, struck repeatedly by the batons of Hamilton county sheriff’s deputies.